ApsaraDB RDS supports three billing methods: subscription, pay-as-you-go, and serverless. The basic fee consists of a computing resources fee and a storage resources fee.
Choose a billing method
| Billing method | How you pay | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Subscription | Pay upfront for a fixed duration. Longer durations offer greater discounts. | Long-running, predictable workloads |
| Pay-as-you-go | Fees are calculated based on actual resource usage and deducted from your Alibaba Cloud account balance every hour. | Short-term or variable workloads. Release the instance when it is no longer needed to avoid ongoing charges. |
| Serverless | Billed by the hour based on actual RDS Capacity Units (RCUs) consumed, not by instance type. The system automatically scales RCUs to match your workload. | Intermittent or unpredictable workloads |
Switch between billing methods
| From | To | Supported engines |
|---|---|---|
| Subscription | Pay-as-you-go | MySQL, SQL Server, PostgreSQL, MariaDB |
| Pay-as-you-go | Subscription | MySQL, SQL Server, PostgreSQL, MariaDB |
| Pay-as-you-go | Serverless | MySQL only |
| Serverless | Pay-as-you-go | MySQL only |
Subscription spec changes: The price before and after a change may differ. You may need to pay the price difference or receive a refund. See Change instance specifications.
Pay-as-you-go spec changes: Billed based on the price of the new specifications. See Change instance specifications.
Serverless spec changes: Specifications cannot be changed manually. The system scales RCUs automatically.
Billable items
The basic fee of an RDS instance is:
Total fee = computing resources fee + storage resources fee
Computing resources
| Billable item | Description | Billing method |
|---|---|---|
| Instance type | Determines the number of CPU cores and the amount of memory provisioned | Subscription, Pay-as-you-go |
| RCU | The computing resource unit for serverless instances. One RCU delivers performance equivalent to RDS Basic Edition with 2 GB of memory. | Serverless |
Storage resources
| Billable item | Description | Billing method |
|---|---|---|
| Storage capacity | Charged for the storage provisioned across primary, secondary, read-only, and disaster recovery instances. Price varies by storage type. See the ApsaraDB RDS buy page for pricing. | Subscription, Pay-as-you-go |
| I/O performance burst | Available on Premium Enterprise SSDs (ESSDs) only. Charged based on burstable I/O operations after the feature is enabled. | Pay-as-you-go |
| Data archiving | Available on Premium ESSDs only. Charged based on the amount of data archived to Object Storage Service (OSS) buckets after the feature is enabled. | Pay-as-you-go |
In addition to the items above, ApsaraDB RDS provides value-added options. See Billable items for the full list.
Estimate your cost: On the ApsaraDB RDS buy page, configure the parameters — Billing Method, Region, Database Engine, Edition, Architecture, Storage Type, Zone, Deployment Method, Instance Type, and Storage Capacity — and the estimated price and applicable discounts appear in the lower-right corner.
If you set the Billing Method parameter to Subscription, you must configure the Subscription Duration parameter. Longer subscription durations provide more savings.
Renewal
Subscription instances expire at the end of the billing period. Renew before the grace period ends. After the grace period, CPU cores, memory, and disks are released and all data is deleted. See Renewal policy.
Overdue payments
If your Alibaba Cloud account has overdue payments, all pay-as-you-go RDS instances that belong to your account become overdue. You can unlock or rebuild overdue instances within a specific period of time. Subscription instances are not affected by overdue payments. See Overdue payments.
View billing details
To view costs broken down by billable item — such as instance type, performance monitoring, and SQL Audit — see View your bills.